User blog:BirdOfBlueFeathers22/"An Inconvenient Tooth: Part 1" Review
Here's another review I felt I'd move to here. Synopsis of Episode We begin with the title card on a light blue background. Beaver Boy is with the birds and holding a tree branch in his mouth, jumping up and down while the birds look confused (Peep and Chirp look at each other strangely). We open to a sunny sky and hear Beaver Boy blabbing in a muffled voice. We pan down to see...exactly what I just described. No, seriously. They're standing on the edge of Quack's pond. Joan starts the episode by telling us that Beaver Boy is very excited about something, but is having trouble getting the words out. As he finishes Quack gives a cute nod, then stares cross-eyed in confusion, and sheepishly shakes his head, saying he didn't understand a word of that. He muses that it must be some kind of new beaver talk. Chirp looks at him sarcastically and Peep points out that maybe it would help if Beaver Boy took the log out of his mouth, to which Chirp agrees. Beaver Boy does and starts to say, "I have something to..." before stopping to point out that Peep is right that he can talk better without the log. The three birds nod in agreement, then Peep and Chirp look at each other in confusion. "You were saying?" Chirp says. Beaver Boy just nods and then stops to remember, and tells them he has something exciting to show them. He goes off; the birds share another confused glance as he does and stare after him. Beaver Boy then comes back into the frame and whispers for them to follow him, winking. They then do, Quack with his usual happy, eyes-shut walk. We then fade to a hillside. As we watch Beaver Boy head up it, Joan tells us that he was so excited about his...exciting thing that he wanted everyone to close their eyes. As he gets near the top he dances, saying it's going to be the biggest surprise ever, and tells them to not look. The birds reenter the picture, walking with their eyes closed. Chirp asks if they're almost there, as her eyeballs are getting wrinkly. Haha. Quack, who meanwhile has just continued to look happy, says he's so good at this, saying that he can do it backwards. He does so (coming dangerously close to walking backwards into Chirp), saying, "Walking backwards, eyes closed! Walking backwards, whoo-hoo! Look at me go! Look at the duck go!" Oh, that Quack. :) We see the top of the hill, and what looks like the tops of...cherry tree branches lying below it. Our party reaches the top, and Beaver Boy tells them they can look. The birds open their eyes...to shock. "Oh, no!" cries Peep. We get a wide shot and see Beaver Boy is just continuing to grin dumbly while the birds stare in horror...and pan down to see why. Yes, it's a destroyed a huge cherry tree orchard, accompanied by the sound of ominous wind. "What happened?" cries Chirp. "I cut them! All by myself!" says Beaver Boy proudly. "And it only took me two days!" Peep and Chirp stare at him sadly, Peep asking Beaver Boy why he would do that. Beaver Boy then pauses and stops to think again. "I know, because I'm a beaver!" he eventually says. Um...wow. "But those were cherry trees!" Chirp says angrily. "Now there won't be any cherries to eat, or shade for the birds! Did you think of that?" Beaver Boy just continues to grin idiotically at them, saying no, he didn't, since he's a beaver. Ugh. Chirp's reaction to this pretty much says how I feel. Peep continues to stare at him sadly. Quack tells Chirp and Peep to relax already, saying there's nothing wrong with cutting a few trees and giving a laugh. "A few?!" Chirp retorts. "That was a forest!" She walks over to the edge of the cliff. "Animals lived there, Quack! How would you like it if somebody destroyed your home?" Quack blows a rasberry in response, saying that could never happen. Chirp says it could, saying that if Beaver Boy cut down all the trees in the world, and made a lot of dams, then Quack's pond would dry up. Quack coldly tells her that Beaver Boy wouldn't do that, but then reacts in surprise and, concerned, asks Beaver Boy, "Would you?" And here comes a particularly ridiculous part. Beaver Boy has an imagine spot! It's drawn in the same weird style as Peep's fantasy in the episode where he meets Tom. We see a small, cheaply drawn version of Quack's pond on a beige background and a small, beady-eyed Quack surface in it, sighing in content and lying back. We pan over to see tons of cheaply drawn tree stumps and a creepy, beady-eyed representation of Beaver Boy chomping on a small cluster. Cheaply-drawn versions of his parents appear, and the father says, "That's my boy! Look at him go!" He catches the trees Beaver Boy cuts and throws them to the mother who throws them into the stream. We get a wide shot of it all and see the water drain from Quack's pond. The cheaply drawn Quack sits up and looks around in confusion. And then we pull back to see him in the center of a beige planet covered in tree stumps and deforested trees. Huh...? We fade back to reality to see Beaver Boy grinning thoughtfully. He voices out loud how his fondness of the idea of cutting down all the trees in the world, since his parents would be proud. Quack silences him with his right foot, telling him, "Don't even think it!" Beaver Boy starts to say through Quack's foot that he can't help it, and Chirp finishes for him that yes, they know, because he's a beaver. Quack looks to her and then back to Beaver Boy, who nods happily. Quack is startled by this. We fade to the party walking, with Joan telling us that the birds didn't know what to do about how they'd get Beaver Boy to stop destroying trees when it's his nature. During this Beaver Boy stops and goes back (Chirp notices), and we focus on him as he reaches a tree and prepares to destroy it. Chirp yells at him to stop and comes into the frame. She attempts to pry Beaver Boy from the tree from behind and then push him away from it from the front, and succeeds. As Beaver Boy sighs, Chirp yells at him, "No more trees! OK?" Beaver Boy tells her that if he doesn't gnaw on them, his teeth will get bored. Quack points out that then they'll have to find some other way to entertain his teeth. He asks if anyone has ideas. As they think, Peep gets an idea: what if Beaver Boy made some new trees? Quack doesn't think it sounds entertaining to teeth, but Chirp likes where he's going and tells him to continue. Peep says that he was thinking that Beaver Boy could make some trees just for chewing, but leave all the other ones alone. Chirp and Beaver Boy stare at each other and brighten, Chirp telling Peep that his idea is great. Quack looks happy about it too as Peep nods. But Beaver Boy is confused about how he'd make a tree. Peep doesn't know. Quack walks off with his eyes closed, telling them they should go find a baby tree and ask how it got made. As Peep and Beaver Boy go off in different directions, a frustrated Chirp starts to yell to Quack that you can't ask a tree how it's made when suddenly Quack yells, "Over here! I found one." Chirp gives her bored look and hops off towards him. "Boy I'm good so quick and fast!" Quack comments as they all gather around the baby tree he found. He then bends down by it and says, "So tree...my name is Quack, and here's what we need to know." He pauses thoughtfully. "How would a beaver make a tree like you?...How would he do that?" It's pretty cute and funny. Peeps twitter page recently posted a GIF of this, in fact. Chirp tells Quack that he's totally ridiculous, as trees can't talk. She tells him if he wants to know how something is growing, you have to dig it up. Quack gasps in horror, and stands protectively in front of the baby tree, furiously telling Chirp, "We are not digging this up! It's a baby tree! And I found it!" Awwwwww. Chirp tells him that they'll do it carefully and put it back when they're done. Quack looks to Peep, and shakes his head in refusal to Chirp. (Love the sound effects used for each move, btw. Those are always beautifully done.) Beaver Boy says that if he can't dig it up, he might have to chew it instead! Quack still looks stern, but eventually lets his head drop, defeatedly giving in. He tells Beaver Boy to take it. Beaver Boy digs under it, and pulls it out. Lodged into a part of the root is an accorn. Chirp gasps as the camera closes on the accorn. "I don't believe it!" she says, getting close to it. "It's growing from an accorn! Trees grow from accorns!" she happily tells Peep. This surprises Quack. Peep says this means that if they can find a bunch of accorns, they can grow a bunch of trees. During this Quack isn't looking too happy. Beaver Boy is, though, and adds that this means he can cut the trees down, right? Chirp affirms to him that yes, it does, and then slyly asks, "But who has accorns?", looking smugly at Quack. "I don't..." As Beaver Boy covers the baby tree in the dirt, Quack whistles...and just continues to. "What?" he says, noticing he's being stared at. "Why is everyone looking at me?" The other three stare at Quack and then glance uncertainly at each other, and then smile at Quack. Quack gives a big sigh in defeat. We fade to Quack's bush. We hear the sounds of him inside getting his accorns while the others stand around outside. He emerges with an accorn in his beak. He drops it in front of Beaver Boy, sadly saying, "There. My last accorn." He then angrily tells Beaver Boy not to ask for any more, because there aren't any. We then hear a noise that sounds exactly like accorns. Everyone reacts in surprise. Chirp asks what it was. Quack uneasily backs up in front of the bush, replying "What was what?" "That noise that sounded like a lot of accorns falling down," says Peep. Quack sheepishly tells him those weren't accorns, when suddenly two fall out of his bush. He pushes them back in with his right foot, and, more confident, tells them he gave Beaver Boy his accorn---his one and only accorn. He walks to Beaver Boy and says, "And why did I give it to you? Because I'm a duck." He sighs, with a happy "yes," as Peep and Chirp look at each other uncertainly. Chirp then looks smug and, as Quack is telling Beaver Boy he's the kind of duck who sacrifices for others, she hops over to his bush and tells Peep and Beaver Boy that there are hundreds of accorns in the bush. As she says it a ton spill out, and she adds that they can grow a whole forest. Beaver Boy looks happy but Quack looks shocked. Beaver Boy tosses the one accorn to the side and walks over to the pile, leaving Quack looking uncertain. "NO!" he yells. He runs over to the accorns but slips on them and lands on his back, groaning in pain. The others look concerned. We cut to a shot of the ground. Beaver Boy comes into the frame and starts digging. We then see Quack standing at the bottom of a hill, late in the day, looking annoyed and with an accorn under his left foot. As Chirp enters the frame from the right and takes it in her beak, Joan explains that Peep and Chirp eventually persuaded Quack to give up his accorn stash by reminding him that accorns don't just grow trees, but grow ''on trees---so new trees mean new accorns!. As she does we see Beaver Boy finish digging and pan out to see him surrounded by small, covered-up holes. Peep and Chirp enter the frame; Chirp deposits the accorn in freshly dug hole and Peep covers it with dirt by brushing his left foot over it. "And they're mine, right? All of them?" Quack asks, entering the frame, too. We pan out to see even more holes as he looks around worriedly. Chirp assures him that yes, Beaver Boy gets the trees and he gets the accorns. Beaver Boy then goes over to another hole and tells the "trees" to start growing. Of course, nothing happens. We see the three birds' reactions: Peep is watching curiously, Chirp boredly, and Quack excitedly. Chirp tells Beaver Boy that she thinks it might take a while. Beaver Boy decides that's ok, and that his teeth can wait until tommorrow. "And that's where we'll leave this story..." Joan says, as the birds pass by Beaver Boy, briefly stopping next to him. "...for now. With Beaver Boy waiting for his trees to grow, and Peep, Chirp and Quack heading home for the night." As we watch the three birds walking off, Quack pauses and tells her (yeah, I love it on the rare occasion they talk to her!), "I'm going back to my bush, actually," causing Peep and Chirp to stop and look back at him in confusion (Peep actually turns around). "I have, um...a few things to take care of," he adds, and walks in the opposite direction as Chirp gives a smug look and then back at Peep. We get a wife shot of Beaver Boy waiting by the holes, Peep and Chirp walking in one direction, and Quack in the other as Joan says, "Okay, Peep and Chirp are going home, Quack..." and here she lowers her voice, "...has a few more secret accorns he wants to eat." As they all pass out of the frame Beaver Boy lies down in front of a hole, falling asleep. Joan clarifies this by saying, "And Beaver Boy...is sleeping. Sleeping and dreaming of all the trees he's going to cut down...tommorow." Well, if that isn't setting yourself up for a major letdown...but hey, isn't that what I kind of did at the end of Part One of the last two-part episode I reviewed? Thoughts on the Episode If it wasn't already clear, I'll say it now: I do not like Beaver Boy. All he ever does is be annoying and incredibly dumb. As if to make the main characters look incredibly smart. Add to that the fact that he's not even funny, and you've got a pretty poorly-written character. So why on earth is there a two-part episode where he's the main character? Not only that, but this isn't even the first time, since he was pretty important in "Dry Duck", the first two part episode of the series. Why do the writers like him so much? So does this mean the episode is one of my least favorites? So far, sort of. It would be one thing if it were just a single episode, but since they're dedicating two parts to it, it just feels like a bit of a waste of an entire episode. Being Peep, though, it's not horrible by any means. It's still very entertaining and involves the main three throughout (the episodes where Chirp is absent, except for maybe "Peep's Night Out", are far weaker in my opinion for that reason). There's good humor from Quack, of course. His protectiveness of the baby tree was too cute, and his refusal to give up his accorns was pretty funny. Chirp was well-written and likeable, considering how she didn't tolerate Beaver Boy's near-crazed behavior. And while Peep didn't say a lot, he was well-written and likeable as usual. I particularly liked his bit about recognizing the sound of Quack's accorns. The episode is pleasant enough for someone who just wants a small, funny dose of Peep. It's more interesting than "Trading Places", I admit, but knowing there's more to it just makes it rather tiring. Beaver Boy doesn't deserve two-part episodes. He's just not a character enjoyable enough to watch that much in a row. Thankfully, the writers seemed to have picked up on this, as neither of the two-part episodes in season five feature him prominently. Category:Blog posts